In the United States, the Friday after Thanksgiving is a major shopping day. The media will show reports of Black Friday shopping crowds outside of major department stores and malls. People who are waiting to be nearly the first in line to get the savings on Christmas presents for family and friends. When the doors open, mayhem erupts and people get injured as crowds stampede through the open doors. Corporations are now beginning to open on Thanksgiving Day to allow people to shop after the big meal.

I’m not a big fan of that scene, but the waiting lines that happen in your city or town can give your church an opportunity for a servant evangelism project.

Servant Evangelism Ideas on Black Friday

Servant evangelism is a simple way to market your church’s Christmas outreaches after Thanksgiving has passed.

On the simplest level, servant evangelism is marketing your church. It involves some form of giveaway that meets a need, with an attached card that gives information about your church.

These servant evangelism ideas are useful any time of year, but post Thanksgiving and Black Friday crowds at malls present a natural crowd that you can bless.

Your act of kindness can build the bridge for the person to receive a touch of love from God. You are showing the community that your church cares and does not exist only for itself.

Add a invitation to church—even a simple card with your church’s name, phone number and times of services. They might come and hear more about Jesus during the Christmas season. You can add a comment that your church wants to bless the community, showing God’s love, with no strings attached.

Always obey the rules of your locality, and know that you may need to secure permission of owners if you are on private property. For example, your local mall may be considered private property and security may not allow you to bless the people who have gathered. You’ll have to learn ahead of time what boundaries are in place and make sure you obey them.

7 simple Black Friday Evangelism Ideas.

These 7 servant evangelism ideas for Black Friday can be used at other times of the year, but this would make a natural gathering for your volunteers to participate in these ideas

Coffee with sugar and cream available. Be careful with the hot coffee.

A staple of church community evangelism has been the door to door outreach campaign.

If you want to start door to door outreach in your community, I want to provide you with some starting points for your team to consider.

1. Define your purpose

Your purpose will determine the training you will need to give your volunteers.

Are you seeking to learn community needs?

Are you inviting people to a particular outreach event or new sermon series?

Are you desiring to share the gospel with each person who opens the door?

Are you looking for prayer needs?

Are you doing a servant evangelism type outreach, like giving food to every household?

Are you expecting to visit with people, or simply leave literature like a door hanger advertisement or gospel tract?

One of my friends wanted simply to pass out tracts to every household in the community and listen for prayer needs. He and his team knocked on every door, gave some literature, and offered to pray with people for particular needs.

2. Define your area

What is the geographical area that you will canvas? Define the limits of where you want to go.

If you are including apartment complexes or condos, you many need to secure permission from the property management to avoid problems. While I do believe in free speech, I also desire to obey private property rights that some complexes choose to have.

You will want to keep your area to a size that will allow you to make repeat visits during the course of the year.

In one of our door to door campaigns a few years ago, we visited every home in managed housing complex. We secured permission from the apartment manager, who was genuinely surprised that anyone would even care to visit every household in that complex. It gave us a chance to witness to her as well as we talked about why we were doing this.

What we failed to do however was make a repeat visit within 4 months. We never did that outreach again.

3. Recruit and Train your volunteers

Depending on the purpose of your door to door campaign, you’ll recruit and train according to that purpose.

I would even encourage your team to spend at least a month or two praying before taking the first step to the first door.

You may even want to prayer walk your community for a month before you go.

One of my pastor friends chose this as their option. They spent two months prayerwalking their community for 2 hours a day before they started their door to door outreach.

Possible Door to Door Training Resource

While there are many gospel presentations (I call them gospel scripts) that one could memorize for door to door evangelism campaigns, I teach an evangelism method can help you at each door you visit during your evangelism campaign.